Red Rag

John Brogden, has defended Lex Stewart’s right to join the Liberal Party, on the grounds that:

Everybody’s entitled to join the Liberal Party so long as they subscribe to our broad range of views.

Not every former One Nation voter or every former One Nation member is a ridiculous extremist. So I just don’t know what the guy’s views are.

Fair enough — you can’t expect the leader of a party to personally vet every membership application. But when it’s been brought to your attention that Stewart was a senior policy adviser to Pauline Hanson and has spoken at an event run by the Holocaust-denying Adelaide Institute, it’s probably wise to take another look.

Stewart’s involvement in other political parties raises further concerns. He was integral in the establishment of the Great Australians party, and was its National Leader in 2002. Just like the Citizens Electoral Council, GA calls for tax reform and economic isolationism. But just like the CEC, the party also believes in a global conspiracy involving international finance, global government and — of course — the Jews.

The Great Australians’ antisemitism is usually thinly disguised as opposition to the Bilderberg Group, a clique of politicians, businesspeople and academics from Europe and America that has met since 1954. In a 2003 newsletter (pdf), the Great Australians informs us about the threat it poses:

There are more bureaucrats in this country than there are rats. They are the backbone of our Government, together with the Labor Party, and their jobs are guaranteed by the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank. Why else have public servants received such phenomenal salary increases lately but to keep them in place for the Bilderbergers.

And later:

The only thing we can say in the defence of both these parties [Labor and Liberal] is that subtly Treasury instructs them to carry out the wishes of foreigners. They are … in effect the representative of the IMF and the World Bank; both controlled by The Bilderbergers (see Page 5).

On page 5 this conspiracy is fleshed out. It is a “shadowy world government” directing our lives from secret meetings; Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were “groomed at Bilderberg meetings”. A substantial portion of the material appears to be drawn from the Liberty Lobby’s Spotlight magazine, which reported regularly on the Bilderbergers until it folded in 2003 after a spat with its sister organisation, the Institute for Historical Review. The Great Australians’ newsletter includes an article, lifted from Spotlight, which explains how the Bilderbergers conspired to bring down Margaret Thatcher.

The subtext is very easily detected. Instead of talking about international financiers and Zionist Occupied Government, they talk about international financiers and Bilderberger Occupied Government. That Bilderberg happens to be a Jewish name is a neat coincidence that flags their true meaning to those who are more accustomed to open antisemitism.

But that’s not to suggest that the Great Australians are always so guarded. In an earlier 2003 newsletter (pdf), they made it quite clear who was in control of world affairs:

11 September … promptly bred a PR campaign which spread throughout the world – terrorism. If you think about it, this psychological warfare has probably been the worst effect of the unbridled Americans and behind them, the Jewish lobby, calling for one world government.

Lex Stewart’s involvement with the Great Australians was ended by a factional dispute in which he was accused of teaming up with David Oldfield to destroy One Nation. It’s true that Stewart’s role in One Nation is not supported by many on the Australian racist Right (he claims to have been behind Pauline Hanson’s eventual rejection of John Pasquarelli) but it is also true that the hard Right scene is more bitterly factionalised than even the hard Left.

The fact that John Cumming, Fredrick Toben and Jim Saleam do not personally get along with Stewart does not get him off the hook — on that basis you could argue that Jack van Tongeren is sane and saintly. The fact is, Lex and his critics have moved in the same extremist circles for many long years.

Lex Stewart helped establish an antisemitic political party, and gave a speech to a conference of racists and Holocaust-deniers. These are not matters that can be lightly brushed aside, and it is incumbent upon John Brogden to follow them up (there might be a perfectly innocent explanation) and decide whether such a person is welcome as a member of the NSW Liberal Party.